Training Ground Update

4 August 2016

ShrewsWeb

Maxwell Amenity begin the next stage of work

As work continues on the Greenhous Meadow pitch ahead of the season opener with MK Dons, Maxwell Amenity Ltd are also hard at work improving the clubs Sundorne Castle training ground.
The first stage of work began back in April, however, after a wet summer, the ground staff have only managed to do 9 days’ work at the training ground in the last 4 months.
The aim is to improve the training ground to the standard of the Greenhous Meadow surface, which was named as the best playing surface in League One last season.
It is hoped that the improved surface will allow Micky Mellon and his team to train on a purpose built training facility all season round.
Dave Saltman, Managing Director at Maxwell Amenity Ltd, admits that the weather has made things tough, but is positive that the end is in sight.
“This summer the work has been challenging,” admitted Saltman.
“We’ve had an awful lot of rain and every time it rains it makes it difficult, because the soil type at the training ground is heavy clay and silt, which means it soaks water up like a sponge and then takes 10 days for the ground to dry out sufficiently to get machinery back on.”
“In the last week, even though we’ve had some rain, the ground has been better and we’ve been able to now spread around 800 tonnes of spoil that we were given free by Wolves and AFC Telford United and that’s currently being spread on with big agricultural spreaders at the moment.”
“Hopefully, tomorrow afternoon (Friday) and Saturday we will be mixing that into the existing soil, trying to improve that, because this material that were spreading is very high sand content material.”
“So, we will be mixing that into the top 50mm of existing clay silt soil and then doing some more rough grading and levelling.”
With the weather hopefully taking a turn for the better, Dave is hopeful that the ground can be seeded sooner rather than later.
“On Monday we have the first lorries coming in bringing 1200 tonnes of course sand material, which will be spread over the two new pitches and once we’ve got that spread next week, hopefully we will be ameliorating that into the surface and then finishing off grading, finalising and consolidating the levels and hopefully follow with seed.”
“So maybe by the middle of August the pitches will finally be seeded,” added Saltman.